A /jp/ Touhou Visual Novel, Semi-Master Outline Draft 2 [public release 2] (subject to further change/additions, though meant to hold comprehensive long-term information for future reference) (any point with a (?) following it is up for dubious inclusion)

Current Working Title - Touhou: Japonaiserie Patchwork

Protagonist: (personally, I would refrain from changing this much from here on with the stage of writing we're in but suggestions are still fine to make)
- male young adult (age ambiguous, under 30/likely 20-something, only child), financially struggling while living on his own once grown and has perceived issues with confidence, Gensokyan native but slightly socially isolated/alienated
- lower middle class family background; father somewhat crippled via in-village accident (non-youkai related), mother grew overprotective, sheltered MC for most of his young life as what money they had/trade they could make mostly went to food + in-home lessons from private tutors (met Keine through occasional visits this way)
- great at home-cooked meals (thanks to mother), has non-traditional/slightly bookish interests (not fully dork-like, just a simple by-product of being around people like Keine consistently)
- hard worker, though could be overbearing if he can't control his passion
- inexperienced with Youkai antics/the abnormal, will easily make him flustered despite his curiosity
- decently charming, good sense of humor, though also a little brash/willing to get himself into more than he ought to through trust
- has some mild distain towards typical village normality but does not prevent him from showing humility or sometimes connecting with others (close intimacy is what's hard for him, number of 'genuine friends' could be counted on one hand)
- generally polite/amicable on average but can be loosened up with time
- socially conscious, well-rounded etiquette but can still hold his own private opinions/reservations (sometimes aloof by extension)
- good heart, though could be swayed into temptation or negativity under the right context
- family name used to be known in more affluent circles pre-barrier before eventually falling from grace in the modern era

Game Backstory:
You are Anon-kun, living on your own for the first time during Gensokyo's 140th season but only barely scraping by. 
Your modest budget from grunt work out in the crops, coupled with the occasional odd job in structural repair, just hasn't been cutting it like you initially thought it would. 
Your father can't help much since what meager support he could scrounge after an accident that cost him one perfectly working leg a good few years ago (fell off a client's highbeam during roof repair, busted a few ribs as well, recovery at Eientei went smoothly enough but his body was never the same) had left your parents somewhat financially stagnant ever since.
Your mother never took the risks your father was willing to endure well and that had been the final reality check she'd need. You never went outside much again after that time.
What didn't go into your then private education had to go into making sure there was still food on the table & a roof overhead. It's part of what drove you to at least try getting out on your own when you could once you'd saved up enough of your own money, something your father somewhat understood but your mother needed more convincing over.
You haven't been in touch with them since really, the separation wasn't easy for either of them anyways. It's your life to lead, isn't it? You're in a different part of the Village and you'd rather show yourself again when you know you'd have something concrete to show for it, something you could call your own besides some basic shack.
Now you've been getting through that life and it seems as if things just aren't as cracked up as they were meant to be. You might be barely surviving, sure, but that's something you've gotten used to at this point. The real question is: are you really Living?
This cooped up lifestyle isn't for you. A man of your age has to start getting himself out there beyond simple platonic interactions, right? This life in the Village has grown all-too familiar and your ambition knows there's still a whole world out there to experience, dangerous as it may be.
It's springtime and everywhere you look you seem to see your fellow young adults all hitching together to enjoy the many beauties this land has to offer. 
You try not to let it get to you much, but repression never works. 
Through your tutoring connections over the years, you came to know one Keine Kamishirasawa who eventually grew to be a semi-regular acquaintance once you were phased out of private tutoring as a young man.
She's sometimes able to provide a quiet space of solace & good company during what downtime you have these days, which might be more than you're willing to admit with how infrequent work has been.
But you also know she represents what more there really is out there in Gensokyo, as much as she'd want you better off safe rather than sorry just like any other Villager.
You've seen them around every so often, typical residents don't enjoy paying them much mind if they can help it but when you're already looking at things from the outside you tend to notice some of the little extraneous details.
Youkai. Gensokyo is filled to the brim with them and you know for a fact there are Humans just as powerful willing to brush shoulders with such creatures constantly.
You're aware of the dangers they represent, what could befell any given Villager reckless enough to throw the cautions of their life to the wind - overtly so, but in spite of that all the same…
So many of them seem adorable! Why? Why must you be taunted by such cute & charming personalities just beyond your grasp??
Any potential matches in the village just come off as a little too normal, plain & unassuming of their place in the world. What you're after is excitement! Boundless adventure that only this valley would have to offer and the compassion that could blossom from running into the right people.
You'd just have to be smart enough to make the right decisions as well. You could manage at least that much, couldn't you?
Luckily you were able to get your hands on a map of Gensokyo thanks to a friend of yours keen on local history. It's seems to be a little old but it ought to get the job done.
You have at least 2 more weeks before the season will start to slowly shift again. Keine has occasionally mentioned taking part in an arranged Flower Viewing with her own friends, wouldn't it be nice to have a close companion of your own to treat to such a spectacle at its peak? 
It'd be simple, but a good start to getting yourself out there nonetheless. There could be much to see and do, and you're ready to try your hand with fresh sights and even fresher faces alike.
You just need to decide where you'd like to try first.

Structural Mechanics:
- NVL style (writing centric, minimal choices, traditional text-over-background image/character drawing)
- "Good" & "Bad" endings to each character route, one general "Bad" ending for shared for routes with no girls selected or routes with no time to court another girl
- basic 3DCG backgrounds (made in blender by OP)
- custom drawings for the girls (multiple styles/artists acceptable) or Kaoru's asset art (ToS: https://web.archive.org/web/20240510130147/http://gensoukyou.1000.tv/kiyaku.html , https://mega.nz/folder/ud1XiQAa#s1bcCcLc2Lv-tq3I80My0w)
- 1 anon expressed interest in music composition (possible placeholder japanese/touhou music in the meantime)
") The exact number of songs.
2) The situation those songs will be put in (the more explicit the better).
3) The instruments he wanted.
4) A rough idea of what he wanted the songs to be."
- MC will simply run into designated girl per selected area (possible shared areas depending on final girl roster, area may not always be obvious indication)
(the following is a tweaked copy-paste from wapchan on how things will be mechanically paced overall)
- max limit of 15 days total with the fifteenth (or otherwise final) day holding either a character-centric "Good/Corruption End" (depending on choices made) or a failed Loner route "Bad End"
- you have 14 active days total until the ideal time for Flower Viewing passes you by (the game takes place in late April with the viewing itself taking place a little over two weeks from the start at the Hakurei Shrine)
- all possible locations to visit from the Village will be available from the start, locations only becoming unavailable should you eventually be rejected by anyone
- you will not know who/what exactly to expect where until your first encounter, nor will the eventual girl you meet be expecting any romance right off the bat
- at the end of each day, you will return to the village and be prompted to select from the map again the following day (there will be small in-between scenes for each given day & night giving the chance for interactions between Village regulars such as Keine or further revealing the backstory of our MC for every potential pre-route day/night before failure is inevitable - 8 and 9 respectively, as well as small comments made over the location itself before heading out after selection)
- it takes 4 days in order to lock yourself into the route of a given girl, with at least 3 of those days needing to end successfully via the right dialogue-driven choices (1 binary choice per pre-route encounter, possible room for a third option if writer has a decently simple idea? only one choice will lead to success)
- these choices dictate what happens during the encounter (what you talk about, where you two might go or do, etc.) and it will not always be obvious which choice will be fruitful (hypothetically may even prompt a reset if things end especially drastically or fatally, depends on girl/writer)
- if you choose poorly and end things on an un-ideal note for more than two encounters, then your final visit with her (automatically takes place by the end of the fourth day of interaction, you will not be overtly aware of how well you've done until this point) will feature her revealing to you that she's slipped through your fingers and cost you what perceived progress you believed was being made (a character-specific "Bad End", bars you from her location/route or could even prompt a complete reset depending on the girl & how drastic her reaction is)
- should you succeed the majority of those 4 days, then you'll automatically start heading through her route after the fourth visit starting on the fifth day at least (no chance to switch routes from here on) which will last 5 days (this will end with you two finally viewing flowers together, a character-specific "Good End" - small bits of ending dialogue/discussion may change depending on the girl, or you winding up making the girl/situation more complicated/worse for yourself somehow leading to a "Corruption" end which may not always feature a visit to the Flower Viewing)
- some of the route-specific days would offer variances to location, activity, or topics discussed to allow for some personalization on the part of the writer (can still leave room for constructively-framed drama/emotional tension or especially steamy interactions depending, this will also be where non-detrimental interactions with other 'hus could potentially take place as well as even passively running into another girl from a different route if applicable - minor writer coordination required there)
- if you do not end up with any girl by the ninth day at the latest (with at least one rejection) then you will end up in the Loner route and fail, requiring a restart (non-character-specific "Bad End", likely ending up drunk at Geidontei late at night and possibly sulking around the streets)
- this gives you 4 extra days to test your options with other 'hus should you choose to jump around with one spare day just in case you fail with one of them (though failing with two girls consecutively will leave you with no time to court anyone else and also put you in the Loner route)
- spreading yourself too thin early on would be detrimental as you'd need to have at least 3 encounters with someone under your belt before the ninth day in order to secure even a single route, meaning you could hypothetically spend the first 6 days with someone different each time at the cost of leaving only enough room to choose poorly once out of your remaining 3 days of same-girl encounters with no chance to fall back on anyone else in time (this also gives us a minimum/maximum number of girls for our roster - 6 to 8, the max number isn't 9 so the player will be forced to spend at least one day with someone previously selected & have a greater taste of what there is to offer in the VN)
- ideally, you could dedicate 3 days to one girl and 3 days to another to maximize your chance of success should things fall through with one of those two options at the last minute (worst case scenario would be failing at the other one as well, leaving you no time to dedicate yourself to anyone else)
- should you decide not to commit to anyone enough to put you into any specific route without being rejected at any point (even if you have 3 successful encounters with a girl, you need to follow-through with a fourth encounter to cement your choice since you still won't lose her if that's the only time you make poor choices), you will also end up in the Loner route and earn a non-character-specific "Bad End" (no-girl failure runs will share the same ending)

Focuses/Ideas/Themes:
- character-specific audio cues with variance on subtlety(?)
- naturalistic forest/countryside ambiance
- proper characterization (fairly canon) & emotional complexity (certain girls may lie, lead you astray, bring you into potentially harmful situations, etc.)
- traditional intimacy/softcore romance/lightly-implied sexual nature over time (non-explicit, overtly-explicit scenes still require approval of OP)
- well-balanced comedic moments alongside genuine emotional tension (room for mild verbal abuse and/or implied protagonist death/injury depending on the route & girl selected)
- eventual chance for mild personalization (specifically with height, would slightly alter some interactions)(?) (late in development addition, if even)
- potential to make our protagonist worse off or any given girl 'better' ("I can/can't fix her" & "I will/won't let her break me" mentalities)

Avoidances/"Don'ts":
- explicit fetish content (infidelity, scat, vore, futa, obvious lolicon, rapist protagonist, etc.)
- extreme physical abuse (on the part of protagonist)
- over-abundance of atypical Touhou memes (Reddit-tier stuff) 
- overreliance on overused fanon tropes/themes (some wiggle-room there for writer felixibility, just don't be sloppy with it)

Programming:
Custom by OP (SFML library code)

OP's Writing Guideline:
- Put the dialog on a separate line, like in the (first thread's/wapchan thread's) pic
- To create paragraphs, just make a blank line and do not do indentation
- Leave two lines blank to announce page change (this will be in NVL style)
- Put between [] the current place and the time of day (morning, afternoon, evening and night). Example: [Hakurei Shrine yard, afternoon]. Do this at the start of the text and every time the place or time of day changes
- Do the same to announce when a character arrives or leaves. Example: [Marisa arrives] or [Reimu leaves]
- Don't break the fourth wall
- A little fanon is allowed, but keep things mostly canon
- During the initial encounters phase, you should start the day in the moment after anon-kun makes the choice on the map, in [Outside of anon's house, morning]. During the route you can start when he wakes up
- MC will make a comment about the location he's heading to upon selection
- Specify the scene you are writing using the 3 numbers, like [2.1.0]
- For choices, indicate which scene it will show, like in the pic
example:
[choice 2.1.1]: "I love you reimu"
[choice 2.1.2]: "I hate you reimu"
- During the initial encounters phase, the only other touhous that can appear are the ones with no route. When you are on a route any touhou can appear

Character Roster (WILL NOT BE FINALIZED UNTIL DEMO IS COMPLETED, demo will have only two routes):
-writers present-
1. Marisa (myself)
2. Ran (also myself?)
3. Seija (ArimasuKa)
4. Chimata (chimaAnon)
5. Kasen? (possible confirmation, anon involved wishes to read through WaHH first if still involved at this point)
6. 
(minimum)
7.
8.
(MAXIMUM)

-interest expressed (but no current writers confirmed)-
Sagume
Nitori
Lunasa
Mokou
Meiling
Tenshi
Yukari
Kasen
Parsee
Sekibanki
Shou (possible writer present)
Megumu
Seiran
Rika
Kanako
Sanae
some cast member of TH11 (that isn't Yamame)
Youmu
Yuuka

(^roughly everything currently established as of February 13th, 2025. OP & i will be occasionally preoccupied irl with school & work respectively though this can all be used as a potential base for anyone else to attempt writing out a small proof of concept that will likely be considered for the final product or at least the demo - we likely won't be too picky with writers willing to put in any effort, artists as well when the time comes, but please understand if this continues to be a gradual process. we can only hope you'd be patient for more to arrive in the coming months)